By Adrienne Roy
Todd Haynes’ filmography is distinct in that he has spent most of his illustrious, four-decade-long career striving to represent the unrepresentable, or at the very least, dispute the representational normativity of Hollywood cinema. From Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) to May December (2023), his films are often deeply intertextual and thus occupy a specific place within the zeitgeist. While Haynes is no stranger to pastiching the work of other artists, Carol (2015) engages with another film from the director’s repertoire to provide an alternate ending. Far From Heaven (2002) and Carol include narratives wherein multiple characters experience queer desire, or a desire that cannot easily, nor honestly, be mapped onto the world they inhabit. Set in 1967, Far From Heaven is a quintessentially Haynesian pastiche of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955), that does not endow its protagonist, Cathy Whitaker, with her desired conclusion. Cathy’s wish to be with Raymond, a Black man, is denied. Her husband, who concurrently falls in love with a man and leaves Cathy for him, is not met with the same indignation. This conclusion mirrors, albeit under disparate circumstances, the final act of All That Heaven Allows. In both films, the protagonists cannot productively act, or be acted upon, because they must conform to the hetero-patriarchal expectation that feminine desire begins and ends with bearing children. Carol defies that expectation when the titular character falls in love with Therese and forsakes her role as a devoted (yet unhappy) wife and mother.
Set in 1952, Carol similarly grapples with the impossibility of marital relations that resist the American cultural hegemony. However, this film follows a different trajectory because it stresses the romantic and platonic love between queer women. It is not because the protagonists are lesbians that their outcomes differ from their melodramatic predecessors, but they are better positioned to resist the patriarchal expectations of their femininity since their desires are not heteronormative. Therese and Carol’s desires are not just queer, but they exclude men altogether. The struggle for—and the inevitable impossibility of—feminine sexual agency is a prevalent feature of 1950s melodramas. Carol stands out because it suggests an alternative that does not leave the female protagonists where they were found—not in a better place, but a queered one. Moreover, the film’s foregrounding of “the heroines’ and the audience’s desire” is consistent with the history it depicts (White 34). I argue that Carol renders an account of femininity that acknowledges its inexorable entrenchment in hetero-patriarchal apparatuses but finds liberation in challenging compulsory heterosexuality, myths of invisibility, and ultimately allowing Therese and Carol to get what they want: each other (White 33). The film’s representation of the heroines’ interiority does not denote their emancipation from their respective hetero-patriarchal contexts, but it asserts the possibility of their independence despite these circumstances. Finally, I suggest the film’s creation of heterotopias delineates a feminine (and therefore non-normative) organization of space.
Compulsory heterosexuality, a term coined by Adrienne Rich, is a bias “through which lesbian experience is perceived on a scale ranging from deviant to abhorrent, or simply rendered invisible” (632). In a later section of “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Rich clarifies that the end to which heterosexuality is enforced upon women is to “assur[e] male right of physical, economical, and emotional access” (647). Haynes’ previous films echo Rich’s concepts that women are disillusioned by the expectation that their purpose is to be subservient to the systems that repress them and rob them of their autonomy. None of Haynes’ films — Far From Heaven (2002) and Safe (1995) come to mind — see their protagonists overcoming the barriers that Rich expounds upon. Carol’s attempt to redress the patriarchal order arises through the externalization of Therese and Carol’s lesbian experience, or more broadly, the centralization of a “women-identified experience,” which partially suspends the leading women’s deference to male power by limiting the access the men in Carol have to the protagonists (Rich 648). In rejecting heterosexuality, not merely as a sexual preference but as the framework that sustains the social and ideological constraints of the patriarchy, Therese and Carol share an experience that is profoundly and exclusively feminine. The unobstructed manifestation of Therese and Carol’s relationship does not propose a secondary history wherein the 1950s were hospitable to lesbians. However, Carol dispels the idea that existence begins with visibility. While their love is always under threat, the film concludes with the promise that the couple will—or in a more empowered sense, should—find each other again.
Many sequences dialectically exemplify how the film negotiates the conditions of compulsory heteronormativity, but I will highlight the scene that opens with the sound of Harge, Carol’s soon-to-be ex-husband, knocking on Abby Gerhard’s door. We do not immediately know it is Harge, but the knocks are so loud and aggressive that we could easily presume it is some kind of an authority figure, —and from the look of apprehension on Abby’s face, we are led to believe she is under the same impression. Yet, we do not see her expression change as she realizes it is Harge because the film frames the shot from over her shoulder. Abby’s obstinate “what are you doing here?” indicates the degree of her indifference towards Carol’s soon-to-be ex-husband (Carol 1:03:12). Abby greatly influences the viewer’s attitude towards the masculine figure in this scene because she is still in the shot even as Harge is barking at her. I argue we are not only seeing Harge as Abby does, but we are also perceiving his likeness—the man who has nowhere to direct his power if not onto his wife—through the same lens.
Figure 1.1 “Harge visits Abby at her home,” Todd Haynes, Carol, 2015.
Figure 1.2
The confrontation between Harge and Abby bears interesting parallels to a similar conflict in Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, but they diverge in their respective deployments of formal elements. In Sirk’s 1955 melodrama, Cary and her son Ned argue about her courting a younger man. The chromatic oppositions, rendered through the lighting and blocking of this scene, are garish, but they serve to simultaneously confine Cary into the domestic, heteronormative space and, in the absence of her late husband, establish Ned as the new enforcer of patriarchal standards in the house. If Carol’s over-the-shoulder shot instills Abby (and by proxy, Carol) with an agency over her identity, then the opposite is true when Haynes reapplies the same shot with Ned; but, that is not to say that the film is not on Cary’s side. The formal excess alienates us from the realism of the diegesis by painting a surrealist landscape, which emphasizes the inadequacy of dialogue in expressing Cary’s inner life.
As a single, lesbian woman with no children to chastise her into submission, Abby has a greater lexicon to work with in her debate with Harge than Cary does with Ned. The way the film organizes its melodramatic codes does not underscore Harge’s power because Abby’s inner life does not require the same validation that Cary’s does. Standing in her door frame, Abby is in control of her home but not restricted to it. This would not be the case if it was her heteronormative marital home, but she still must grapple with the connotations of oppression that her dwelling embodies in the broader social context. In the same scene, while Harge’s hat shadows parts of his face—effectively obscuring it—Abby is completely visible. Even as the camera also goes over Harge’s shoulder when Abby is talking, it is further away from him than it is from Abby when he speaks, so his perspective is inconsequential in relation to hers. Harge then tells Abby that because Carol is not at home “with me” “she must be with [Abby]” (Carol 1:03:36). Abby observes his flawed logic, that Carol cannot exist unless it is in relation to someone else, and calls him out on it: “You’ve spent ten years making damn sure her only point of reference is you” (Carol 1:03:44). Her recognition of this reality signals to the audience that such a perception is possible within the diegesis, regardless if she — or any woman, for that matter — can act on it. It is in this vein that Carol captures, with palpable clarity, an image of the 1950s that does not impose a contemporary gaze, so we can fathom what it was like to exist as a (white, upper-middle-class) woman of that era, incapable of anticipating what her future would look like.
Carol could not map its characters the way it does if the film did not apply a feminist revision to the organization of the space. Once, when they are having lunch, and again while they are having sex for the first time, Carol remarks to Therese: “What a strange girl you are, flung out of space” (Carol 23:22). To comment that a person is flung out of space, without directly referring to which space they are being flung out of, leaves us with a statement that is difficult to decipher. But in her essay titled “The Heterotopias of Todd Haynes: Creating Space for Same Sex Desire in Carol,” Victoria Smith proposes that together, they are not only being flung out of one space but flung into a new, placeless place, where their non-normative desires can breathe for a moment. Pulling from Michel Foucault’s “Of Other Spaces,” she attests that “[h]eterotopias function, much as Haynes’s films do… to reflect the inverse of society” (Smith). A heterotopia is not a utopia or an imagined place; rather, they “replicate sites of normalcy” to “call them into question,” and hold space for “the other” (Smith). As a result, heterotopias have a distinct capacity to critique the social and ideological restrictions imposed on mid-century women, not only those with a same-sex love story.
Therese and Carol’s lesbianism is, in itself, a heterotopia, and thus the film operates as one too. The dual function of the heterotopic space is perpetually on display, especially in the motels that Therese and Carol stay at during their short-lived road trip. When they have sex for the first time (and the only time on screen), it is not at the luxurious hotel in Chicago that reproduces the aura of upper-class, normative, heterosexual respectability from which Carol is attempting to escape, but in a dilapidated motel room with vomit green walls in Waterloo, Iowa (Smith). The visceral dirtiness of the room bespeaks the overtly scandalous nature of their affair. Conversely, the room posits the relevance and politics of scandal when Therese and Carol are by themselves. The anatomy of Carol and Therese’s affair is etched into the design and function of the motel—a space that represents a departure from white, upper-class heterosexual respectability. Before sleeping with each other, they are looking into a mirror, which Foucault claims is one of the most heterotopic of heterotopias because the space it reflects is real; but, the reflection itself totally reorganizes and disturbs our spatiality, leaving the site distorted and unreal in major yet remarkably subtle fashion (Smith). As they kiss, still in the mirror frame, Therese tells Carol to “take [her] to bed” (Carol 1:15:55). I purport that this quote, which could convey an entirely different meaning in the domestic sphere, elucidates what Patricia White identifies as the story’s portrayal of “the maternal seduction fantasy … [whereby] Therese is positioned as the pre-oedipal bisexual child who desires the mother sexually” (40-1). With a more developed understanding of Therese’s psychology, the contest between her and Carol’s daughter Rindy for who will win Carol’s love is suddenly less ambiguous. Even in the motel bedroom, when Carol could not be further away from Rindy, her daughter’s presence continues to be evoked. Rindy’s invasion into her mother’s private life proves that she and Therese can exist independently, but they cannot share Carol. The film illustrates this predicament and how it anguishes the title character, but it does not inhibit Carol from choosing Therese in the end.
Though they have their limitations, the opportunities presented by a heterotopia ultimately empower those who inhabit these milieus. Regardless of its constraints, the heterotopic space enables Therese and Carol to explore—and consequently validate, as well as affirm—their non-normative desires. Returning to the examination of compulsory heteronormativity, Adrienne Rich contends that men’s “physical, economical, and emotional access to women” is contingent upon “the rendering invisible of the lesbian possibility” (647). Carol unequivocally stages the complex and unpleasant reality of same-sex romance in the 1950s, but from beginning to end, the film implies that lesbians have always existed, whether or not it was endorsed by the ruling class. Moreover, Carol brings an image of mid-century lesbians to life and contests the myth of their invisibility through its cinematography. Shot on 16 mm, the grainy film stock adds texture to the screen and the characters on it. Their corporeality is so enhanced by this feature that Smith states it “suggests emotions below the surface of the characters.” Smith’s claim does not, however, account for the processes by which the heroines, of their own volition, divulge their respective interiorities to each other and the world.
Borrowing from Kathleen Gough’s essay “The Origin of the Family,” Rich reexamines Gough’s characterization(s) of male power. Rich seeks to revise Gough’s argument because it “does not perceive these power-characteristics as specifically enforcing heterosexuality; only as producing sexual inequality” (638). Furthermore, the purpose of Rich’s essay is to outline how much more expansive feminist theory could be if a queer and/or lesbian lens were applied to it. The first point on Gough’s list states that the power of men is to “deny women [their own] sexuality” (Rich 638). Rich’s addendum is that male supremacy involves “the destruction of records and memorabilia and letters documenting the realities of lesbian existence…as a means of keeping heterosexuality compulsory for women” (638). Haynes prevents this from happening within Carol’s diegesis and demonstrates how lesbians—and all women—took responsibility for creating and sustaining their own archives. In an awkward interaction with her friend Dannie, when she visits his office at the New York Times, Therese articulates she feels “funny taking pictures of people like it’s some sort of invasion of privacy” (Carol 27:43). Therese’s opinion changes when she is with Carol: capturing her supersedes any feelings of embarrassment or shyness. By offering Carol the Teddy Wilson and Billie Holiday vinyl, Therese is codifying their experiences together onto unsuspecting objects, promising the longevity of their romance—or the memory of it—whether they stay together or not. Through these practices, they establish a history whose effects will allow them to see each other with better clarity. As a result, they will be able to gradually map their subject positions at a distance from the male prerogative. We do not get to watch this outcome unfold for the heroines, but the film decidedly imparts to the viewer that Carol and Therese understand the impossibility of predicting their futures.
Carol addresses the experience of femininity within a patriarchal and heteronormative context differently than many of Haynes’ other films, which more or less respond to the same ideological constraints. Perhaps the change in Haynes’ approach can be traced to his desire to pay “a tribute to the lesbians in [his] life” (White 32). Until Carol, Haynes’ work had masterfully depicted how it feels to be suffocated by sexism, by misogyny, and by the systems from which they operate; his 2015 film does not forget these issues, but it is not afraid to be imaginative. Above all, Carol allows its audience to indulge in a story we know might be fleeting, yet is still fundamental to the construction of history, both personal and collective, queer and not.
Works Cited
All That Heaven Allows. Directed by Douglas Sirk, Universal, 1955
Carol. Directed by Todd Haynes, Weinstein Company, 2015.
Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs, vol. 5, no. 4, 1980, pp. 631–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173834. Accessed 25 Apr. 2024.
Smith, Victoria L., “The Heterotopias of Todd Haynes: Creating Space for Same Sex Desire in Carol.” Film Criticism, vol. 42, no. 1, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.13761232.0042.102.
White, Patricia. “Lesbian Reverie: Carol in History and Fantasy.” Reframing Todd Haynes: Feminism’s Indelible Mark, edited by Theresa L. Geller and Julia Leyda, Duke UP, 2022, pp. 31-50.